Chapter 16: The Future of the Cities [1]
INTRODUCTIONWe believe action of the kind outlined in preceding pages can contribute substantially to control of disorders in the near future. But there should be no mistake about the long run. The underlying forces continue to gain momentum.
The most basic of these is the accelerating segregation of low-income, disadvantaged Negroes within the ghettos of the largest American cities.
By 1985, the 12.1 million Negroes segregated within central cities today will have grown to approximately 20.8 million -- an increase of 72 percent.
Prospects for domestic peace and for the quality of American life are linked directly to the future of these cities.
Two critical questions must be confronted: Where do present trends now lead? What choices are open to us?
I. THE KEY TRENDS
Negro Population Growth**The size of the Negro population in central cities is closely related to total national Negro population growth. In the past 16 years, about 98 percent of this growth has occurred within metropolitan areas, and 86 percent in the central cities of those areas.
A conservative projection of national Negro population growth indicates continued rapid increases. For the period 1966 to 1985, it will rise to a total of 30.7 million, gaining an average of 484,000 a year, or 7.6 percent more than the increase in each year from 1960 to 1966.
CENTRAL CITIESFurther Negro population growth in central cities depends upon two key factors: in-migration from outside metropolitan areas, and patterns of Negro settlement within metropolitan areas.
From 1960 to 1966, the Negro population of all central cities rose 2.4 million, 88.9 percent of total national Negro population growth. We estimate that natural growth accounted for 1.4 million, or 58 percent of this increase, and in-migration accounted for I million, or 42 percent.
As of 1966, the Negro population in all central cities totaled 12.1 million. By 1985, we have estimated that it will rise 72 percent to 20.8 million. We believe that natural growth will account for 6 million of this increase and in-migration for 2.7 million.
Without significant Negro out-migration, then, the combined Negro populations of central cities will continue to grow by an average of 316,000 a year through 1985.
This growth would increase the proportion of Negroes to whites in central cities by 1985 from the present 20.6 percent to between an estimated 31 and 35.6 percent.
These, however, are national figures. Much faster increases will occur in the largest central cities where Negro growth has been concentrated in the past two decades. Washington, D. C., and Newark are already over half Negro. A continuation of recent trends would cause the following 11 major cities to become over 50 percent Negro by the indicated dates:
These cities, plus Washington, D. C., (now over 66 percent Negro) and Newark, contained 12.6 million people in 1960, or 22 percent of the total population of all 224 American central cities. All 13 cities undoubtedly will have Negro majorities by 1985, and the suburbs ringing them will remain largely all white, unless there are major changes in Negro fertility rates,*** in-migration, settlement patterns or public policy.
Experience indicates that Negro school enrollment in these and other cities will exceed 50 percent long before the total population reaches that mark. In fact, Negro students already comprise more than a majority in the public elementary schools of 12 of the 13 cities mentioned above. This occurs because the Negro population in central cities is much younger and because a much higher proportion of white children attend private schools. For example, St. Louis' population was about 36 percent Negro in 1965; its public elementary school enrollment was 63 percent Negro. If present trends continue, many cities in addition to those listed above will have Negro school majorities by 1985, probably including:
Dallas
Pittsburgh
Buffalo
Cincinnati
Harrisburg
Atlanta
Louisville
Indianapolis
Kansas City, Mo.
Hartford
New Haven
Thus, continued concentration of future Negro population growth in large central cities will produce significant changes in those cities over the next 20 years. Unless there are sharp changes in the factors influencing Negro settlement patterns within metropolitan areas, there is little doubt that the trend toward Negro majorities will continue. Even a complete cessation of net Negro in-migration to central cities would merely postpone this result for a few years.
Growth of the Young Negro PopulationWe estimate that the nation's white population will grow 16.6 million, or 9.5 percent, from 1966 to 1975, and the Negro population 3.8 million, or 17.7 percent, in the same period. The Negro age group from 15 to 24 years of age, however, will grow much faster than either the Negro population as a whole, or the white population in the same age group.
From 1966 to 1975, the number of Negroes in this age group will rise 1.6 million, or 40.1 percent. The white population aged 15 to 24 will rise 6.6 million, or 23.5 percent.
This rapid increase in the young Negro population has important implications for the country. This group has the highest unemployment rate in the nation, commits a relatively high proportion of all crimes, and plays the most significant role in civil disorders. By the same token, it is a great reservoir of underused human resources which are vital to the nation.
The Location of New JobsMost new employment opportunities do not occur in central cities, near all-Negro neighborhoods. They are being created in suburbs and outlying areas -- and this trend is likely to continue indefinitely. New office buildings have risen in the downtowns of large cities, often near all-Negro areas. But the out-flow of manufacturing and retailing facilities normally offsets this addition significantly -- and in many cases has caused a net loss of jobs in central cities.
Providing employment for the swelling Negro ghetto population will require society to link these potential workers more closely with job locations. This can be done in three ways: by developing incentives to industry to create new employment centers near Negro residential areas; by opening suburban residential areas to Negroes and encouraging them to move closer to industrial centers; or by creating better transportation between ghetto neighborhoods and new job locations.
All three involve large public outlays.
The first method -- creating new industries in or near the ghetto -- is not likely to occur without government subsidies on a scale which convinces private firms that it will pay them to face the problems involved.
The second method -- opening up suburban areas to Negro occupancy -- obviously requires effective fair housing laws. It will also require an extensive program of federally-aided, low-cost housing in many suburban areas.
The third approach -- improved transportation linking ghettos and suburbs -- has received little attention from city planners and municipal officials. A few demonstration projects show promise, but carrying them out on a large scale will be very costly.
Although a high proportion of new jobs will be located in suburbs, there are still millions of jobs in central cities. Turnover in those jobs alone can open up a great many potential positions for Negro central city residents -- if employers cease racial discrimination in their hiring and promotion practices.
Nevertheless, as the total number of Negro central city jobseekers continues to rise, the need to link them with emerging new employment in the suburbs will become increasingly urgent.
The Increasing Cost of Municipal ServicesLocal governments have had to bear a particularly heavy financial burden in the two decades since the end of World War II. All United States cities are highly dependent upon property taxes that are relatively unresponsive to changes in income. Consequently, growing municipalities have been hard-pressed for adequate revenues to meet rising demands for services generated by population increase. On the other hand, stable or declining cities have not only been faced with steady cost increases but also with a slow-growing, or even declining, tax base.
As a result of the population shifts of the post-war period, concentrating the more affluent parts of the urban population in residential suburbs while leaving the less affluent in the central cities, the increasing burden of municipal taxes frequently falls upon that part of the urban population least able to pay them.
Increasing concentrations of urban growth have called forth greater expenditures for every kind of public service: education, health, police protection, fire protection, parks, sewage disposal, sanitation, water supply, etc. These expenditures have strikingly outpaced tax revenues.
The story is summed up below:
Local Government Revenues, Expenditures and Debt (Billions of dollars)The fact that the problems of the cities are a national problem is seen in the growth of federal assistance to urban areas under various grant-in-aid programs, which reached the level of $10 billion in the current fiscal year.
Nevertheless, the fiscal plight of many cities is likely to grow even more serious in the future. Local expenditures inevitably will continue to rise steeply as a result of several factors, including the difficulty of increasing productivity in the predominantly service activities of local governments, and the rapid technologically-induced increases in productivity in other economic sectors.
Traditionally, individual productivity has risen faster in the manufacturing, mining, construction, and agricultural sectors than in those involving personal services.
However, all sectors compete with each other for talent and personnel. Wages and salaries in the service-dominated sectors generally must keep up, therefore, with those in the capital-dominated sectors. Since productivity in manufacturing has risen about 2.5 percent per year compounded over many decades, and even faster in agriculture, the basis for setting costs in the service-dominated sectors has gone up, too.
In the postwar period, costs of the same units of output have increased very rapidly in certain key activities of local government. For example, education is the single biggest form of expenditure by local governments (including school districts), accounting for about 40 percent of their outlays. From 1947 to 1967, costs per pupil-day in United States public schools rose at a rate of 6.7 percent per year compounded-only slightly less than doubling every ten years.**** This major cost item is likely to keep on rising rapidly in the future, along with other government services like police, fire, and welfare activities.
Some increases in productivity may occur in these fields, and some economies may be achieved through use of semi-skilled assistants such as police and teachers' aides. Nevertheless, with the need to keep pace with private sector wage scales, local government costs will keep on rising sharply.
This and other future cost increases are important to future relations between central cities and suburbs. Rising costs will inevitably force central cities to demand more and more assistance from the federal government. But the federal government can obtain such funds through the income tax only from other parts of the economy. Suburban governments are, meanwhile, experiencing the same cost increases along with the rising resentment of their constituents.
The complexity of American society offers many choices for the future of relations between central cities and suburbs and patterns of white and Negro settlement in metropolitan areas. For practical purposes, however, we see two fundamental questions:
• Should future Negro population growth be concentrated in central cities, as in the past 20 years, and should Negro and white populations become even more residentially segregated?
• Should society provide greatly increased special assistance to Negroes and other relatively disadvantaged population groups?
For purposes of analysis, the Commission has defined three basic choices for the future embodying specific answers to these questions:
The Present Policies ChoiceUnder this course, the nation would maintain approximately the share of resources now being allocated to programs of assistance for the poor, unemployed and disadvantaged. These programs are likely to grow, given continuing economic growth and rising federal revenues, but they will not grow fast enough to stop, let alone reverse, the already deteriorating quality of life in central-city ghettos.
This choice carries the highest ultimate price, as we will point out.
The Enrichment ChoiceUnder this course, the nation would seek to offset the effects of continued Negro segregation and deprivation in large city ghettos. The Enrichment Choice would aim at creating dramatic improvements in the quality of life in disadvantaged central-city neighborhoods -- both white and Negro. It would require marked increases in federal spending for education, housing, employment, job training, and social services.
The Enrichment Choice would seek to lift poor Negroes and whites above poverty status and thereby give them the capacity to enter the mainstream of American life. But it would not, at least for many years, appreciably affect either the increasing concentration of Negroes in the ghetto or racial segregation in residential areas outside the ghetto.
The Integration ChoiceThis choice would be aimed at reversing the movement of the country toward two societies, separate and unequal.
The Integration Choice -- like the Enrichment Choice -- would call for large-scale improvement in the quality of ghetto life. But it would also involve both creating strong incentives for Negro movement out of central-city ghettos and enlarging freedom of choice concerning housing, employment, and schools.
The result would fall considerably short of full integration. The experience of other ethnic groups indicates that some Negro households would be scattered in largely white residential areas. Others -- probably a larger number -- would voluntarily cluster together in largely Negro neighborhoods. The Integration Choice would thus produce both integration and segregation. But the segregation would be voluntary.
Articulating these three choices plainly oversimplifies the possibilities open to the country. We believe, however, that they encompass the basic issues-issues which the American public must face if it is serious in its concern not only about civil disorder, but the future of our democratic society.
III. THE PRESENT POLICIES CHOICEPowerful forces of social and political inertia are moving the country steadily along the course of existing policies toward a divided country.
This course may well involve changes in many social and economic programs -- but not enough to produce fundamental alterations in the key factors of Negro concentration, racial segregation, and the lack of sufficient enrichment to arrest the decay of deprived neighborhoods.
Some movement towards enrichment can be found in efforts to encourage industries to locate plants in central cities, in increased federal expenditures for education, in the important concepts embodied in the "War on Poverty," and in the Model Cities Program. But so far congressional appropriations for even present federal programs have been so small that they fall short of effective enrichment.
As for challenging concentration and segregation, a national commitment to this purpose has yet to develop. This is seen in the history of national open housing legislation, pending in Congress, which the President has again urged the Congress to enact.
Of the three future courses we have defined, the Present Policies Choice -- the choice we are now making -- is the course with the most ominous consequences for our society.
The Probability of Future Civil DisordersUnder the Present Policies Choice, society would do little more than it is now doing against racial segregation, fundamental poverty, and deprivation. What effect would this have on the potential for major civil disorders?
We believe for two reasons that this choice would lead to a larger number of violent incidents of the kind that have stimulated recent major disorders.
First, the Present Policies Choice does nothing to raise the hopes, absorb the energies, or constructively challenge the talents of the rapidly-growing number of young Negro men in central cities. Therefore, the proportion of unemployed or underemployed among them will remain very high. These young men have contributed disproportionately to crime and violence in cities in the past, and there is danger, obviously, that they will continue to do so.
Second, under these conditions, a rising proportion of Negroes in disadvantaged city areas might come to look upon the deprivation and segregation they suffer as proper justification for violent protest or for extending support to now isolated extremists who advocate civil disruption by guerrilla tactics.
More incidents, however, would not necessarily mean more or worse riots. For the near future, there is substantial likelihood that even an increased number of incidents could be controlled before becoming major disorders. Such control should be possible if society undertakes to improve police and National Guard forces so that they can respond to potential disorders with more prompt and disciplined use of force.
In fact, the likelihood of incidents mushrooming into major disorders would be only slightly higher in the near future under the Present Policies Choice than under the other two possible choices. For no new policies or programs could possibly alter basic ghetto conditions immediately. And the announcement of new programs under the other choices would immediately generate new expectations. Expectations inevitably increase faster than performance: in the short run, they might even increase the level of frustration.
In the long run, however, the Present Policies Choice risks a seriously greater probability of major disorders, worse, possibly, than those already experienced.
If the Negro population as a whole developed even stronger feelings of being wrongly "penned in" and discriminated against, many of its members might come to support not only riots, but the rebellion now being preached by only a handful.
If large-scale violence resulted, white retaliation would follow. This spiral could quite conceivably lead to a kind of urban apartheid with semi-martial law in many major cities. enforced residence of Negroes in segregated areas, and a drastic reduction in personal freedom for all Americans, particularly Negroes.
The same distinction is applicable to the cost of the Present Policies Choice. In the short run, its costs -- at least its direct cash outlays -- would be far less than for the other choices.
Any social and economic programs likely to have significant lasting effect would require very substantial annual appropriations for many years. Their cost would well exceed the direct losses sustained in recent civil disorders. Property damage in all the disorders we investigated, including Detroit and Newark, totalled less than $100 million. The casualty toll was far smaller than that for automobile accidents on an average weekend.
But it would be a tragic mistake to view the Present Policies Choice as cheap. Damage figures measure only a small part of the costs of civil disorder. They cannot measure the costs in terms of the lives lost, injuries suffered, minds and attitudes closed and frozen in prejudice, or the hidden costs of the profound disruption of entire cities.
Ultimately, moreover, the economic and social costs of the Present Policies Choice will far surpass the cost of the alternatives. The rising concentration of impoverished Negroes and other minorities within the urban ghettos will constantly expand public expenditures for welfare, law enforcement, unemployment and other existing programs without reversing the tendency of older city neighborhoods toward decay and the breeding of frustration and discontent. But the most significant item on the balance of accounts will remain largely invisible and incalculable -- the toll in human values taken by continued poverty, segregation and inequality of opportunity.
PolarizationAnother and equally serious consequence is the fact that this course would lead to the permanent establishment of two societies: one predominantly white and located in the suburbs, in smaller cities, and in outlying areas, and one largely Negro located in central cities.
We are well on the way to just such a divided nation.
This division is veiled by the fact that Negroes do not now dominate many central cities. But they soon will, as we have shown, and the new Negro mayors will be facing even more difficult conditions than now exist.
As Negroes succeed whites in our largest cities, the proportion of low-income residents in those cities will probably increase. This is likely even if both white and Negro incomes continue to rise at recent rates, since Negroes have much lower incomes than whites. Moreover, many of the ills of large central cities spring from their age, their location, and their physical structures. The deterioration and economic decay stemming from these factors have been proceeding for decades and will continue to plague older cities regardless of who resides in them.
These facts underlie the fourfold dilemma of the American city:
• Fewer tax dollars come in, as large numbers of middle-income taxpayers move out of central cities and property values and business decline;
• More tax dollars are required, to provide essential public services and facilities, and to meet the needs of expanding lower-income groups;
• Each tax dollar buys less, because of increasing costs;
• Citizen dissatisfaction with municipal services grows as needs, expectations and standards of living increase throughout the community.
These trends already grip many major cities, and their grip is becoming tighter daily.
These are the conditions that would greet the Negro-dominated municipal governments that will gradually come to power in many of our major cities. The Negro electorates in those cities probably would demand basic changes in present policies. Like the present white electorates there, they would have to look for assistance to two basic sources: the private sector and the federal government.
With respect to the private sector, major private capital investment in those cities might have ceased almost altogether if white-dominated firms and industries decided the risks and costs were too great. The withdrawal of private capital is already far advanced in most all-Negro areas of our large cities.
Even if private investment continued, it alone would not suffice. Big cities containing high proportions of low-income Negroes and block after block of deteriorating older property need very substantial assistance from the federal government to meet the demands of their electorates for improved services and living conditions. In fact, all large cities will need such assistance.
By that time, however, it is probable that Congress will be more heavily influenced by representatives of the suburban and outlying city electorate. These areas will comprise 41 percent of our total population by 1985, compared with 33 percent in 1960. Central cities will decline from 31 percent to 27 percent. ***** Without decisive action toward integration, this influential suburban electorate would be over 95 percent white and much more affluent than the central city population.
Yet even the suburbs will be feeling the squeeze of higher local government costs. Hence, Congress might resist providing the extensive assistance which central cities will desperately need. Many big-city mayors are already beseeching the federal government for massive aid.
Thus the Present Policies Choice, if pursued for any length of time, might force simultaneous political and economic polarization in many of our largest metropolitan areas. Such polarization would involve large central cities -- mainly Negro, with many poor, and nearly bankrupt -- on the one hand, and most suburbs-mainly white, generally at1luent, but heavily taxed -- on the other hand.
Some areas might avoid political confrontation by shifting to some form of metropolitan government designed to offer regional solutions for pressing urban problems such as property taxation, air- and water pollution and refuse disposal, and commuter transport. Yet this would hardly eliminate the basic segregation and relative poverty of the urban Negro population. It might even increase the Negro's sense of frustration and alienation if it operated to prevent Negro political control of central cities.
The acquisition of power by Negro-dominated governments in central cities is surely a legitimate and desirable exercise of political power by a minority group. It is in an American political tradition exemplified by the achievements of the Irish in Now York and Boston.
But such Negro political development would also involve virtually complete racial segregation and virtually complete spatial separation. By 1985, the separate Negro society in our central cities would contain almost 21 million citizens. That is about 72 percent larger than the present Negro population of central cities. It is also larger than the current population of every Negro nation in Africa except Nigeria and Ethiopia.
If developing a racially integrated society is extraordinarily difficult today when 12.5 million Negroes live in ghettos, then it is quite clearly going to be virtually impossible in 1985 when almost 21 million Negroes -- still much poorer and less educated than most whites -- will be living there.
Can Present Policies Avert Extreme Polarization?There are at least two possible developments under the Present Policies Choice which might avert such polarization. The first is a faster increase of incomes among Negroes than has occurred in the recent past. This might prevent central cities from becoming even deeper "poverty traps" than they now are. It suggests the importance of effective job programs and higher levels of welfare payments for dependent families.
The second possible development is migration of a growing Negro middle class out of the central city. This would not prevent competition for federal funds between central cities and outlying areas, but it might diminish the racial undertones of that competition.
There is, however, no evidence that a continuation of present policies would be accompanied by any such movement. There is already a significant Negro middle class. It grew rapidly from 1960 to 1966. Yet in these years, 88.9 percent of the total national growth of Negro population was concentrated in central cities-the highest in history. Indeed, from 1960 to 1966, there was actually a net total in-migration of Negroes from the urban fringes of metropolitan areas into central cities. The Commission believes it unlikely that this trend will suddenly reverse itself without significant changes in private attitudes and public policies.
IV. THE ENRICHMENT CHOICEThe Present Policies Choice plainly would involve continuation of efforts like Model Cities, manpower programs, and the War on Poverty. These are in fact enrichment programs, designed to improve the quality of life in the ghetto.
Because of their limited scope and funds, however, they constitute only very modest steps toward enrichment -- and would continue to do so even if these programs were somewhat enlarged or supplemented.
The premise of the Enrichment Choice is performance. To adopt this choice would require a substantially greater share of national resources -- sufficient to make a dramatic, visible impact on life in the urban Negro ghetto.
The Effect of Enrichment on Civil DisordersEffective enrichment policies probably would have three immediate effects on civil disorders.
First, announcement of specific large-scale programs and the demonstration of a strong intent to carry them out might persuade ghetto residents that genuine remedies for their problems were forthcoming, thereby allaying tensions.
Second, such announcements would strongly stimulate the aspirations and hopes of members of these communities -- possibly well beyond the capabilities of society to deliver and to do so promptly. This might increase frustration and discontent, to some extent cancelling the first effect.
Third, if there could be immediate action on meaningful job training and the creation of productive jobs for large numbers of unemployed young people, they would become much less likely to engage in civil disorders.
Such action is difficult now, when there are about 583,000 young Negro men aged 16 to 24 in central cities -- of whom 131,000, or 22.5 percent, are unemployed and probably two or three times as many are underemployed. It will not become easier in the future. By 1975, this age group will have grown to nearly 700,000.
Given the size of the present problem, plus the large growth of this age group, creation of sufficient meaningful jobs will require extensive programs, begun rapidly. Even if the nation is willing to embark on such programs, there is no certainty that they can be made effective soon enough.
Consequently, there is no certainty that the Enrichment Choice would do much more in the near future to diminish violent incidents in central cities than would the Present Policies Choice. However, if enrichment programs can succeed in meeting the needs of residents of disadvantaged areas for jobs, education, housing and city services, then over the years this choice is almost certain to reduce both the level and frequency of urban disorder.
The Negro Middle ClassOne objective of the Enrichment Choice would be to help as many disadvantaged Americans as possible -- of all races -- to enter the mainstream of American prosperity, to progress toward what is often called middle-class status. If the Enrichment Choice were adopted, it could certainly attain this objective to a far greater degree than would the Present Policies Choice. This could significantly change the quality of life in many central city areas.
It can be argued that a rapidly enlarging Negro middle class would promote Negro out-migration, and thus the Enrichment Choice would open up an escape hatch from the ghetto. This argument, however, has two weaknesses.
The first is experience. Central cities already have sizable and growing numbers of middle-class Negro families. Yet, as noted earlier, only a few have migrated from the central city.
The past pattern of white ethnic groups gradually moving out of central-city areas to middle-class suburbs has not applied to Negroes. Effective open-housing laws will help make this possible. It is probable, however, that other more extensive changes in policies and attitudes will be required -- and these would extend beyond the Enrichment Choice.
The second weakness in the argument is time. Even if enlargement of the Negro middle class succeeded in encouraging movement out of the central city, could it do so fast enough to offset the rapid growth of the ghetto? To offset even half the growth estimated for the ghetto by 1975 would call for the out-migration from central cities of 217,000 persons a year. This is eight times the annual increase in suburban Negro population -- including natural increase -- which occurred from 1960 to 1966. Even the most effective enrichment program is not likely to accomplish this.
A corollary problem derives from the continuing migration of poor Negroes from the South to Northern and Western cities.
Adoption of the Enrichment Choice would require large-scale efforts to improve conditions in the South sufficiently to remove the pressure to migrate. It should, however, be recognized that less than a third of the estimated increase in Negro central-city population by 1985 will result from in-migration -- 2.7 million out of total increase of 8.7 million.
Negro Self-DevelopmentThe Enrichment Choice is in line with some of the currents of Negro protest thought that fall under the label of "Black Power." We do not refer to versions of Black Power ideology which promote violence, generate racial hatred, or advocate total separation of the races. Rather, we mean the view which asserts that the American Negro population can assume its proper role in society and overcome its feelings of powerlessness and lack of self-respect only by exerting power over decisions which directly affect its own members. A fully integrated society is not thought possible until the Negro minority within the ghetto has developed political strength -- a strong bargaining position in dealing with the rest of society.
In short, this argument would regard predominantly Negro central cities and predominantly white outlying areas not as harmful, but as an advantageous future.
Proponents of these views also focus on the need for the Negro to organize economically and politically, thus tapping new energies for self-development. One of the hardest tasks in improving disadvantaged areas is to discover how deeply deprived residents can develop their own capabilities by participating more fully in decisions and activities which affect them. Such learning-by-doing efforts are a vital part of the process of bringing deprived people into the social mainstream.
Separate But Equal Societies?The Enrichment Choice by no means seeks to perpetuate racial segregation. In the end, however, its premise is that disadvantaged Negroes can achieve equality of opportunity with whites while continuing in conditions of nearly complete separation.
This premise has been vigorously advocated by Black Power proponents. While most Negroes originally desired racial integration, many are losing hope of ever achieving it because of seemingly implacable white resistance. Yet they cannot bring themselves to accept the conclusion that most of the millions of Negroes who are forced to live racially segregated lives must therefore be condemned to inferior lives -- to inferior educations, or inferior housing, or inferior status.
Rather, they reason, there must be some way to make the quality of life in the ghetto areas just as good. And if equality cannot be achieved through integration then it is not surprising that some Black Power advocates are denouncing integration and claiming that, given the hypocrisy and racism that pervade white society, life in a black society is, in fact, morally superior. This argument is understandable, but there is a great deal of evidence that it is false.
The economy of the United States and particularly the sources of employment are preponderantly white. In this circumstance, a policy of separate but equal employment could only relegate Negroes permanently to inferior incomes and economic status.
The best evidence regarding education is contained in recent reports of the Office of Education and Civil Rights Commission which suggest that both racial and economic integration are essential to educational equality for Negroes. Yet critics point out that, certainly until integration is achieved, various types of enrichment programs must be tested, and that dramatically different results may be possible from intensive educational enrichment -- such as far smaller classes, or greatly expanded pre-school programs, or changes in the home environment of Negro children resulting from steady jobs for fathers.
Still others advocate shifting control over ghetto schools from professional administrators to local residents. This, they say, would improve curricula, give students a greater sense of their own value, and thus raise their morale and educational achievement. These approaches have not yet been tested sufficiently. One conclusion, however, does seem reasonable: any real improvement in the quality of education in low-income, all-Negro areas will cost a great deal more money than is now being spent there -- and perhaps more than is being spent per pupil anywhere. Racial and social class integration of schools may produce equal improvement in achievement at less total cost.
Whether or not enrichment in ghetto areas will really work is not yet known, but the Enrichment Choice is based on the yet-unproved premise that it will. Certainly, enrichment programs could significantly improve existing ghetto schools if they impelled major innovations. But "separate but equal" ghetto education cannot meet the long-run fundamental educational needs of the central-city Negro population.
The three basic educational choices are: providing Negro children with quality education in integrated schools; providing them with quality education by enriching ghetto schools; or continuing to provide many Negro children with inferior education in racially segregated school systems, severely limiting their life-time opportunities.
Consciously or not, it is the third choice that the nation is now making, and this choice the Commission rejects totally.
In the field of housing, it is obvious that "separate but equal" does not mean really equal. The Enrichment Choice could greatly improve the quantity, variety, and environment of decent housing available to the ghetto population. It could not provide Negroes with the same freedom and range of choice as whites with equal incomes. Smaller cities and suburban areas together with the central city provide a far greater variety of housing and environmental settings than the central city alone. Programs to provide housing outside central cities, however, extend beyond the bounds of the Enrichment Choice.
In the end, whatever its benefits, the Enrichment Choice might well invite a prospect similar to that of the Present Policies Choice: separate white and black societies.
If enrichment programs were effective, they could greatly narrow the gap in income, education, housing, jobs, and other qualities of life between the ghetto and the mainstream. Hence the chances of harsh polarization -- or of disorder -- in the next 20 years would be greatly reduced.
Whether they would be reduced far enough depends on the scope of the programs. Even if the gap were narrowed from the present, it still could remain as a strong source of tension. History teaches that men are not necessarily placated even by great absolute progress. The controlling factor is relative progress -- whether they still perceive a significant gap between themselves and others whom they regard as no more deserving. Widespread perception of such a gap -- and consequent resentment -- might well be precisely the situation 20 years from now under the Enrichment Choice, for it is essentially another way of choosing a permanently divided country.
V. THE INTEGRATION CHOICEThe third and last course open to the nation combines enrichment with programs designed to encourage integration of substantial numbers of Negroes into the society outside the ghetto.
Enrichment must be an important adjunct to any integration course. No matter how ambitious or energetic such a program may be, few Negroes now living in central-city ghettos would be quickly integrated. In the meantime, significant improvement in their present environment is essential.
The enrichment aspect of this third choice should, however, be recognized as interim action, during which time expanded and new programs can work to improve education and earning power. The length of the interim period surely would vary. For some it may be long. But in any event, what should be clearly recognized is that enrichment is only a means toward the goal; it is not the goal.
The goal must be achieving freedom for every citizen to live and work according to his capacities and desires, not his color.
We believe there are four important reasons why American society must give this course the most serious consideration. First, future jobs are being created primarily in the suburbs, but the chronically unemployed population is increasingly concentrated in the ghetto. This separation will make it more and more difficult for Negroes to achieve anything like full employment in decent jobs. But if, over time, these residents began to find housing outside central cities, they would be exposed to more knowledge of job opportunities. They would have to make much shorter trips to reach jobs. They would have a far better chance of securing employment on a self-sustaining basis.
Second, in the judgment of this Commission, racial and social-class integration is the most effective way of improving the education of ghetto children.
Third, developing an adequate housing supply for low-income and middle-income families and true freedom of choice in housing for Negroes of all income levels will require substantial out-movement. We do not believe that such an out-movement will occur spontaneously merely as a result of increasing prosperity among Negroes in central cities. A national fair housing law is essential to begin such movement. In many suburban areas, a program combining positive incentives with the building of new housing will be necessary to carry it out.
Fourth, and by far the most important, integration is the only course which explicitly seeks to achieve a single nation rather than accepting the present movement toward a dual society. This choice would enable us at least to begin reversing the profoundly divisive trend already so evident in our metropolitan areas -- before it becomes irreversible.
VI. CONCLUSIONSThe future of our cities is neither something which will just happen nor something which will be imposed upon us by an inevitable destiny. That future will be shaped to an important degree by choices we make now.
We have attempted to set forth the major choices because we believe it is vital for Americans to understand the consequences of our present failure to choose -- and then to have to choose wisely.
Three critical conclusions emerge from this analysis:
1. The nation is rapidly moving toward two increasingly separate Americas.
Within two decades, this division could be so deep that it would be almost impossible to unite:
• a white society principally located in suburbs, in smaller central cities, and in the peripheral parts of large central cities; and
• a Negro society largely concentrated within large central cities.
The Negro society will be permanently relegated to its current status, possibly even if we expend great amounts of money and effort in trying to "gild" the ghetto.
2. In the long run, continuation and expansion of such a permanent division threatens us with two perils.
The first is the danger of sustained violence in our cities. The timing, scale, nature, and repercussions of such violence cannot be foreseen. But if it occurred, it would further destroy our ability to achieve the basic American promises of liberty, justice, and equality.
The second is the danger of a conclusive repudiation of the traditional American ideals of individual dignity, freedom, and equality of opportunity. We will not be able to espouse these ideals meaningfully to the rest of the world, to ourselves, to our children. They may still recite the Pledge of Allegiance and say "one nation . . . indivisible." But they will be learning cynicism, not patriotism.
3. We cannot escape responsibility for choosing the future of our metropolitan areas and the human relations which develop within them. It is a responsibility so critical that even an unconscious choice to continue present policies has the gravest implications.
That we have delayed in choosing or, by delaying, may be making the wrong choice, does not sentence us either to separatism or despair. But we must choose. We will choose. Indeed, we are now choosing.
ON POPULATION GROWTH1. The Census Bureau publishes four projections of future population growth based upon differing assumptions about future fertility rates (the fertility rate is the annual number of live births per 1,000 women aged 15 to 44). Series A assumes fertility rates similar to those prevalent from 1962 to 1966; Series B through D assume lower rates. Assuming that Negro fertility rates will continue to decline, we have used the average of Series C and D -- which make the lowest assumptions about such rates. We have also converted the Census Bureau's non-White population projections into Negro projections by assuming Negroes will continue to comprise about 92 percent of all nonwhites. If, however, fertility rates remain at their present levels, then the total Negro population in 1985 would be 35.8 million rather than 30.7 million. The average annual rate of increase from 1966 to 1985 would be 753,000, rather than 484,000 -- 55 percent higher.
The projection is as follows:
Total U.S. Negro Population (in millions) / Negroes s % of Total U.S. Population / Increase from the Previous Date Shown2. The general concept of a metropolitan area is of an integrated, economic and social unit with a recognized large population nucleus. Statistically, it is called a Standard Metropolitan Statistical Area -- one which contains at least one central city of at least 50,000 inhabitants. It covers the county of the central city and adjacent counties found to be economically and socially integrated with that county.
A Central City is the largest city of an SMSA and which gives the SMSA its name.
"Core city" or "inner city" is a popular expression sometimes meaning central city and sometimes meaning the central business district and densely populated downtown neighborhoods of generally poorer residents. The array of statistical materials for metropolitan areas by "central city" and "outside central city" categories carries with it some dangers which can trap the unwary. The general proposition made in such displays is that the Negro population is concentrated in the central city and is kept out of the suburbs. Certainly this is true.
The danger arises from the inference which the reader may make about the character of "outside central city" and "suburb!' "Outside central city" means the whole metropolitan area outside the city or cities wh.- names are given to the Standard Metropolitan Statistical Area. This is not a homogeneous, affluent, white-only collection of bedroom communities or housing developments. It is a wide-ranging assortment of these and more. Some are attractive communities with trees, grass and fresh air. Others are grimy, industrial towns with all the problems commonly associated with the central city. There are, in fact, 246 cities of over 25,000 "hidden" in the concept "outside central city." Seventy-seven of these had over 50,000 population in 1960. Many are white only or close to it. Many are not. Some even have higher proportions of Negroes to total population than the central cities of the metropolitan areas of which they are a part. Some of these cities are new. Some are old and have to fight the same battles against urban blight as the central cities of many metropolitan areas.
3. We have considered two projections of this population. The first projection assumes no further in-migration or out-migration of Negroes to or from central cities. This assumption is unrealistic, but it provides a measure of how much the central-city Negro population is likely to expand through natural increase alone. The second projection assumes that central cities will continue to contain 88.9 percent of all Negro population growth, as they did from 1960 to 1966.
Total U.S. Central-City Negro Population (in millions)Thus, even assuming no Negro migration into central cities, the total Negro population would increase six million, 49.6 percent, by 1985. Under the more realistic assumption of both continued m-migration (at present rates) and natural growth, total Negro population of central cities would increase by 8.7 million Negroes, 72 percent.
4. We have arrived at these estimates by making three different assumptions about future white central city population shifts: (a) that it will remain constant at its 1966 level of 46.4 million; (b) that it will decline, as it did from 1960 to 1966, by an amount equal to half the increase in central-city Negro population. In all three cases, we assume that Negro central city population will continue to account for 88.9 percent of all Negro population growth. These projections embrace both estimates that are probably unrealistically high and low. The full projections are as follows:
Proportion of Total Central City Population Negro if: White Population Remains Constant at 1966 Level / White Population Declines at an Absolute Annual Rate Equal to: One Half Negro Population Gains / Total Negro Population GainsThe first assumption requires a rise in total central-city population from 58.5 million in 1966 to 67.2 million in 1985. Since many of the largest central cities are already almost fully developed, so large an increase is probably unrealistic. On the other hand, the third assumption involves no change in the 1966 central city population figure of 58.5 million. This may be unrealistically low. But in any event, it seems likely that continued concentration will cause the total proportion of Negroes in central cities to reach at least 25 percent by 1975 and 31 percent by 1985.
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Notes:* Notes appear at end of chapter.
** Tables and explanations of the projections on which they are based appear at the end of the chapter.
*** The fertility rate is the number of live births each year per 1,000 women aged 15 to 44.
**** It is true that the average pupil-teacher ratio declined from 28 to about 25, and other improvements in teaching quality may have occurred. But they cannot account for anything approaching this rapid increase in costs.
***** Based on Census Bureau Series D projections.